


A Love-Hate Relationship

by ArgentSleeper



Series: Merlin Ships Fest [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Drabble, Episode: s04e11 The Hunter's Heart, F/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 23:32:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1918251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentSleeper/pseuds/ArgentSleeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem wasn't that Merlin hated her.  It was that he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Love-Hate Relationship

**Author's Note:**

> For day one of Merlin Ships Fest. Prompt: How did they meet?
> 
> Please ignore my little photo edit at the beginning. I spent about ten minutes on it because I felt like a drabble wasn't enough to express my love for Merthian. In case you didn't know, I ship Merthian with a fiery burning passion, and if you ever want to give me a present it would be a fic where they live happily ever after like they should have.

 

It just wasn’t fair.

 

Arthur was _supposed_ to be marrying Gwen. Was supposed to _already_ be married to her. Merlin would curse Morgana for the rest of his life for her interference. Lancelot hadn’t deserved to be used in such a way, nor had Gwen and Arthur deserved to be manipulated so. The one thing he had to grant to Morgana was she understood the players in her little game. Perhaps she didn’t accept everything she knew about them as truth, else they might not be where they were, but she knew them, inside and out.

 

If he were a bit more paranoid, Merlin might even suspect that she had been behind this. But no, this latest engagement was all Arthur’s fault. Honestly, he ought to be grateful Merlin had stuck to such innocent pranks as he had so far. Spilling soup and inappropriate bodily functions were the least of what his powers could have accomplished.

 

“Careful,” Gwaine murmured in his ear on the second night. “I hear you can turn yourself green if you bottle up that much envy.”

 

Merlin knew Gwaine, and probably all the other knights who paid attention, thought that Merlin was jealous of Mithian, that a marriage meant that Arthur would have someone else to keep close and ask for advice and banter about with. Or perhaps they thought it was second-hand envy, felt on behalf of Gwen, who didn’t even know she should be jealous. And that was a part of it, he couldn’t and wouldn’t deny.

 

But none of them knew –none of them could ever know –the bigger reason. They wouldn’t understand, because only Merlin knew the complexities behind this whole situation. And only he understood how just the sight of Mithian as she raised her veil had made his heart float up from where it had been sunk to his boots. How hard it was to hate her on Gwen’s behalf when there was a huge part of him that wanted to hate Arthur on his own behalf. Because every time he heard Mithian laugh, or saw her smile, or noticed that calculating look on her face as she noticed that all was not right in the triangle between king, princess, and servant, he allowed himself to dream.

 

But unfortunately if he’d learned anything it was that the dream of royal and servant was not meant to be.


End file.
